When the girls, an hour later, arrived at the parish church, they found the entire party from Preston Manor had also arrived. They made a gay and lively set of young people. Quantities of holly and ivy and white cotton-wool lay on the floor of the church, and the rector’s daughter, a tall, handsome girl of nineteen, took the lead, measuring out the work that each person was to do, and smiling in her pleasant, good-humoured way at the clumsy attempts of the beginners. She and her father—who was a widower and she was his only child—wanted the church to look specially beautiful this year, and Mr. Dodd had sent them a substantial cheque for the purpose, as well as a most liberal allowance of coal-tickets, grocery-tickets, blankets, pounds of tea and packets of groceries, and plum-puddings and joints of beef for the poor. Certainly Mr. Dodd was a godsend to the parish; never before had the Ladislaws known such liberality; and, in consequence, never before had the poor people been so happy. When the two Dodds arrived, Margaret Ladislaw went down the length of the aisle to greet them.
“I am pleased to see you,” she said, “and I think you will find some friends here. I don’t know how to thank your good father and mother for their generosity; they have just helped me in the very way I like best to be helped. There’s many and many a poor person who will eat a good Christmas dinner to-morrow who would go to bed hungry but for the liberality of your parents. Now, what would you like best to do, Miss Dodd? I don’t know which of you is Miss Dodd,” she continued, with a smile.
“I think you’d better call us by our Christian names at once,” said Grace, “for we are twins, you know. I am Grace and this is Anne, and I really don’t know which of us is the elder; anyhow, it’s a question of a minute or two.”
“I’d much rather call you Grace and Anne. You have a great look of each other too, and, what is more to the purpose, a look of your dear mother. What a sweet, kind face she has! it is a perfect comfort to talk about the poor to her; she seems to understand them so.”
“She does,” said Anne suddenly. “We are not a bit ashamed of it, you know, Miss Ladislaw; but long, long ago father and mother were very poor themselves. Father says that in those days he made a vow that if ever he came in for money the first thing he’d do would be to help his poorer brethren, and I’m sure he does.”
“He does; you are right!” said Miss Ladislaw; “it is grand of him. I wish there were more people in the world who had his spirit; then the poor would not suffer from neglect and want of thought as they do now.”
While the girls were talking, another girl was eagerly watching, eagerly and impatiently watching. This girl was Kitty Merrydew. She had been given some rather delicate work to do; she was to help to make a wreath of holly on a white ground to go round the edge of the pulpit. Now holly berries are fragile and require more or less delicate handling in order to prevent their being knocked off. Kitty was an extremely stupid worker. Peggy was standing not far from her.
“Oh you oughtn’t to do it like that,” said Peggy. “Let me show you. That’s not a bit the way; ye hold it so, and—and——”
“Nonsense!” said Kitty, in an angry voice; “I don’t want you to show me; you always pretend you know more than any of the rest of us.”
“I’m sure I don’t, Kitty; I couldn’t: but I used to help at home.”